Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature – conference

2017/02/18

Marking the opening of Amsterdam-based The Ritman Library’s traveling exhibition entitled ‘Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature. The Message of the Rosicrucian Manifestoes in the Visual Language of the Seventeenth Century’, a scholarly conference will be held in National Széchényi Library on February 18, 2017. Entitled Divine Wisdom – Divine Nature – A Hermetic Reformation, the conference will feature topics such as alchemy, magic, Christian Kabbalah and the symbolic language of the Rosicrucians.
Visual language, stated in the title of the conference, is reflected in a special form in the topic of the exhibition and conference. Materials that appeared in Germany in the early seventeenth century reflect the approach represented by the topic of the exhibition and conference. Documents presented at the exhibition originated in the direct environment of the circle in Tübingen that inspired the Rosicrucian Manifestoes. They were artistic expressions visualizing the relationship of God and Nature, and that of the macrocosm and the microcosm, embedded in the symbol system of Christianity, Christian Kabbalah and alchemy; using the visual language of the 17th century, they look for and give an answer to the questions of man searching his place in the world.
The conference focuses on the oeuvre of Johannes Reuchlin, Heinrich Khunrath, Daniel Mögling, Stephan Michelspacher, Robert Fludd, Michael Maier, Comenius and John Dee.
The speakers at this conference are all renowned researchers of the era and the intellectual currents associated with the Hermetic tradition. Their lectures want to introduce the audience to the wisdom contained in and conveyed by these ‘iconotexts’. The aim of the exhibition and the conference is to make this treasure, priceless for both the European and universal human culture, available to a wider audience and to interpret and update it for the thinking man of the 21st century.
The Budapest conference also pays tribute to Prof. Dr. Bálint Keserű. His oeuvre, establishing a new school of thought, was instrumental in making us understand the effect of the intellectual currents to be presented on Hungary and on East Central Europe, and in letting their significance be recognized by the international academic community.

The conference features the following speakers and topics:

Endre Ádám Hamvas– Gál Ferenc University
Some remarks on the problem of the term “Hermetic tradition’

Gábor Almási – MTA-ELTE Lendület Research Group on Humanism in East Central Europe
Johann Reuchlin and the Kabbala